Upcoming Shows

About

What the heck is a Handicapper General?

About the music

The Handicapper Generals have been playing together since the summer of 2009. We started as a 5-piece electric blues outfit, and have evolved (devolved?) into a 4-piece acoustic blues outfit. We play lots of outdoor shows, including farmers' markets, private parties and weddings, and more. Our acoustic shows typically feature two acoustic guitars; a drumset; and a harmonica, but you can also catch washboard-drums, guitar-trumpet-drums-harmonica, guitar-washboard-drums-harmonica, .... Well, you get the point. Check out an example setlist to see some of the songs we play. Contact us today if you'd like us to entertain you!

It Must Have Been the Devil

Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Outside Woman Blues

Have You Ever Seen the Rain

Last Fair Deal Gone Down

When You Got a Good Friend

Act Nice and Gentle

Ramblin' on My Mind / Before You Accuse Me

Hoochie Coochie Man

Day Tripper

They're Red Hot

Me and the Devil / Kind-Hearted Woman

Goin' Down the River

Layla

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Malted Milk / Blues for Murder Only

I Got a Woman

Learning to Fly

How Long Blues

Magic Rooster Blues

Hoodoo Man Blues

Key to the Highway

Stack Shot Billy

I've Just Seen a Face

Walkin' Blues

Stranger Blues

Baby Please Don't Go

About the band members

Davey Strus

Vocals, guitar, piano, trumpet

Davey has been playing guitar longer than he cares to admit, and singing and playing piano even longer.

His previous band won the Indiana Blues Society's “Rising Star” competition in 1998 and then immediately broke up.

Miles Z. Sterrett

Guitar, bass, washboard, saxophone

Miles plays guitar and bass, like, so hard. Miles also works and familys regularly.

His high school band totally made it to the State Finals while he was drum major.

Michael Seals

Drums

Michael turned an obsession with Rock Band drums into an obsession with actual drums.

The homemade pressure-sensitive electonic drum set that Michael used in the band's early days was a sight (and sound) to behold.

Doc Strus

Harmonica, piano, organ

Doc (Dave Sr.) taught himself to play piano by ear as a young man by listening to forbidden Ray Charles records.
In recent years, the blues harp has become his primary instrument.

He and his son have been playing together in one combination or another for over 15 years.

About the band name

“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal.” So begins Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story “Harrison Bergeron.”

In Vonnegut's dystopian vision of America's future, the Handicapper General of the United States enforces absolute equality among the populace—clown noses for the handsome, bags of birdshot permanently weighing down the athletic. Every person is perfectly average and entirely unexceptional.